


Diffindo

by runningondreams



Series: Leviosa-verse [1]
Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Gen, M/M, Pining, Triwizard Tournament, ages and ages ago though, like pre-american revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 12:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20275900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams/pseuds/runningondreams
Summary: In his seventh year, Steve stands as Hogwarts’ representative in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and rescues Tony Stark from the bottom of the lake.They’re not even friends. Not really.





	Diffindo

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [a post on tumblr by @no-gorms](https://no-gorms.tumblr.com/post/187025864121/hi-im-just-curious-what-do-you-think-steve-and). Part of the Leviosa-verse. For the purposes of this fic, I’m pretending Triwizarding Tasks get re-used occasionally, and that this one was picked in Harry’s time specifically because no one died in it the first time, mostly because I could not resist the idea of sending _Steve_ diving into cold water. Many thanks to laireshi for cheerleading and beta work!

  
_‘Come seek us where our voices sound,_  
_We cannot sing above the ground,_  
_And while you’re searching, ponder this:_  
_We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss,_  
_An hour long you’ll have to look,_  
_And to recover what we took,_  
_But past an hour – the prospect’s black_  
_Too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back.’_  
  


* * *

  
  
Two spells: A bubble head charm, and a timer. Then Steve strips down to stockings, vest and breeches and takes a running dive into the ink-dark water, not even bothering to check what the other Champions are doing. Timing isn’t a bonus this round, it’s a limit, hard as death, and he’s not wasting a second.

Two minutes, and he spots lights in the depths. Six minutes, and he gets lost in a forest of seaweed he’s never noticed from the surface, too-large leaves blocking his view and dragging blanket-heavy at his limbs. It takes him nearly another ten minutes to untangle floating tendrils and find the lights again, diving ever deeper, until his muscles burn and tremble and the darkness closes all around, only those winking pinprick stars to guide him.

The water gets colder, cold enough to numb his hands and shock air from his lungs, but it can’t nearly compare to the ripple that crashes through him when he’s confronted by Tony Stark, sleep-limp and chained to a carved stone chair at the bottom of the lake, next to two strangers Steve vaguely recognizes from meals and passing in the halls.

He doesn’t have time to think about it. The timer spell ticks on like a pocket watch held against his ear, crisp and relentless. Thirty five minutes left. Batroc is pulling his classmate from the third chair and slinging spellwork at the merfolk closing around him even as Steve reaches Stark’s prison, and de Fontaine comes into view between one minute and the next. 

The chains are thick, iron-heavy things, and he runs through three unlocking spells in quick succession before clawed hands grab at him and he’s faced with a ring of sharp-toothed merfolk with pointy tridents.

_Stupefy_, it turns out, doesn’t work nearly as well underwater as it does moving through air, but his shield spell is still reliable and Aqua Eructo, while not ideal, is still effective in pushing pointy things away from his general vicinity. Sectis works on the chains, though he has to make several cuts to get them all off. Thirty minutes left. Twenty-five. He risks a glance over at de Fontaine as he drags Stark upright and she grins at him before disappearing with an inrush of water. Apparition. He really should have tried to make it to the July test session over summer holiday.

Dragging Stark, soaking wet and—not _dead weight_, not that, but he’s _limp_, and _heavy_ and still unconscious so—so anyway it’s not easy, trying to swim through mud-murk and clinging plants and get to the lake shore before his charms wear off or his time runs out while _also_ pulling another person. Steve’s incredibly, ridiculously grateful that they’d learned some basic rescue techniques in Defense last year because he’s pretty certain that Stark is making this as difficult as possible, even in magically spelled sleep. The sticking charm keeps wearing off and needing to be renewed, and Stark’s ridiculous pendant keeps digging between Steve’s shoulders, and his hair is long enough to float free of its tie and into Steve’s eyes, and his green-and-silver robes keep fluttering around and threatening to catch on things. Steve keeps promising himself that if they actually do snag _one more time_ he will hex them, or transfigure them, or possibly just vanish them, though maybe not that because he has absolutely no intention of showing up with a naked Tony Stark in his arms in front of not just his own classmates and teachers, but the better part of his wizarding peers from three different countries, and the Tournament’s assigned Aurors, and probably at least a few heads of the premier wizarding families in the world. 

Not to mention that Stark would probably turn him into a fish and throw him to the Giant Squid on the spot. 

A shadow moves through the ink-dark gloom, and Steve renews his shield and tries to swim faster. He thinks about spells for weightlessness, thinks about _mobilicorpus_ and _ascendio_, and speed spells and _enervate_, because Stark would know how to make this easier. Stark would give him a _how are you missing this Rogers,_ look and pull off something brilliant and make it look easy but here Steve is, worrying about how being underwater changes things, worrying about spell disruption and that if he tries to use more magic Stark will wake up and immediately drown. Something touches his ankle and he kicks out, kicks harder, and then his feet are sinking in the mud of the lakebed and his head and shoulders break out of the water.

He’s the last to the shore, but there’s still two minutes on the official clock. He’s completed the task, they’re a full challenge in, and no one’s died yet. Admittedly, Batroc seems to have a headwound, de Fontaine is cradling what might be a broken arm and Steve’s pretty sure his shoulder is bleeding, but still. No deaths. And the crowd is roaring approval, flashing Gryffindor gold and red.

Stark wakes before Steve can set him down and flails like a landed fish against his back until the sticking charm releases and he slips.

“What—” he falls back with a jolt that makes even Steve wince and looks down at his damp-dragging sleeves, and then up at Steve again. “Rogers, are you—why do you look like you got attacked by a harpy in the quidditch locker room and why, in Merlin’s name, is everything _wet_. I thought we had a truce here.” 

“I, um. Saved you. From the bottom of the lake.” It’s becoming pretty obvious that Stark had no idea he was going to be Triwizard Task-bait. Steve’s not even sure he’s noticed the crowds, busy as he is patting down his sleeves, and his boots, and his belt with ever-increasing concern. 

“Are you alright?” Steve asks, and then Stark is scrambling to his feet and rushing him.

“_What did you do with my wand_,” he hisses in Steve’s face. He has a handful of Steve’s shirt twisted in his fist, and Steve feels something drop dread-cold through his middle. 

“I don’t have it,” he says. “I swear, I never saw it, I don’t—” He looks out at the lake, at the placid ripple of the water over the well-deep shine of the sky. It can’t still be out there. Can it? He wouldn’t have missed that, couldn’t have he would never—

He hadn’t been looking.

Stark looks ready to murder him, and Steve doesn’t doubt he could, wand or no wand. He wonders, the thought fleeing across his mind like a startled deer, whether a Champion has ever been killed by a fellow classmate during a task before. 

“Accio Stark’s wand,” he says, twisting his wrist just so. The spell takes, but the wand doesn’t come from the lake. Instead, it sails toward them from the left, castle-side, where the Headmaster is making his way across the grass.

Stark snatches it out of the air and dries them both off with a smooth, complicated motion Steve can’t help but envy. He staring at the Headmaster, now, and the judges, all fury apparently diverted.

“Bottom of the lake, you said?”

“There were chains, and merfolk,” Steve confirms. “Sorry,” he adds. “I didn’t know—”

“I know _you_ didn’t,” Stark snaps. He’s tying back his hair, his social mask sliding click-slick into place. “The whole _point_ is that the Champions don’t know.” He tears his eyes away from the Headmaster. “Stop standing there and put some clothes on, will you? You’re embarrassing the entire school.”

Steve is fairly certain no one cares whether he’s wearing his robes or not just now, but Stark is already striding angrily away so he retrieves his outer layers anyway. Announcements boom out, updating the scores: he’s in the middle, trailing de Fontaine by five points and leading Batroc by two. A penalty: Batroc’s rescuee was injured. And then Steve gets waylaid by one of the nurses, and then by Batroc offering congratulations, and then by two of the senior Aurors, who are at least still encouraging about his prospects if he applies for apprenticeship in the spring (if he lives, of course. Some days he wishes he’d never put his name in the Goblet, but _apprenticeships cost_, and where was he supposed to get the money? Him, muggle-born Steve Rogers of the Colonies with just a few sickles to his name. Odd jobs in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley would never be enough).

By the time the crowd thins and he can take a breath and look around again, Stark is long gone. Which is just as well, really; Steve can’t remember what he’d wanted to say, and he needs to wash up and change clothes. He still has a Charms essay to finish before tomorrow.

“Shame the Tasks don’t get you off this stuff,” Dugan says, later, when they and a handful of other seventh years are bent over books in the library. 

“Shame they don’t let us _all_ off,” grumbles Pinkerton. “Everyone’s at the Task, anyway, it’s not as if any of us have more time than he does. And speaking of.” He points his quill at Steve. “What was all that about, with Stark?”

“All what?” Steve asks. He turns back a few pages to double-check his notes.

“You know. Why him. Someone tied up at the bottom of a lake and they pick Stark for you. What was it, a test of compassion for dreaded rivals?”

Steve sighs. “For the last time, we’re not rivals.” There wasn’t a good word for it, even in his head. Too fiery for friends, but burning too much the same for enemies.

“You used to be.”

“He used to steal my notes and prank me, that doesn’t make us rivals.”

“Point still stands,” Dugan insists, setting aside his book entirely now. Eager. “Why him? Why not one of us? Not that I want to be chained up at the bottom of the lake mind, but—”

“I don’t know, alright?” Steve crumples his parchment and stands; stamps his temper down to smoldering coals again. “I’m going back to the common room” He stacks his books. “I’ll see you later.”

“Right,” Dugan says, subdued, and that’s that.

Except: Steve doesn’t go back to the Gryffindor common room. Instead, he paces in front of a plaster-plain stretch of wall until a door appears, welcome as an open hand, and he disappears behind it. 

Hours later, when his essay is done, when he’s caught up on his Potions readings and practiced the new Defense spells, and resignedly resorted to staring out the window at the rainy moors like some hopeless idiot in a chivalric romance, Stark flops down on the couch behind him.

“You missed dinner,” he says, slightly muffled. From the wavy reflection in the glass Steve thinks he’s got his arm over his face.

“Did you bring me anything?”

“What am I, a servant?” Stark gripes, but when Steve turns there’s a little knotted-kerchief bundle on his desk, wrapped up in Stark’s distinctive spellwork. A full plate, still hot, with a perfectly chilled cup of cider in the middle.

“Thanks.” Steve doesn’t have to look to know Stark is waving away the gratitude. _Don’t mention it. Ever._

Truce means that they talk, even when they’re not on holiday with just the two of them in the whole of Hogwarts and maybe a handful of younger Colony kids who can’t go home, if they have homes to go to at all. It doesn’t mean they’re friends. 

At least, it doesn’t mean they’re friends, outside this room. And sometimes not inside it either, the number of shouting matches they end up in. But it’s … something. 

There’s even a piece of baklava on the plate, which Steve is pretty sure means he’s been absolved of any wrongdoing in the lake incident. It’s usually _him_ bringing _Stark_ food, but when the pattern shifts he can generally gauge the mood by food choices. Stark is not as subtle as he thinks he is, and baklava is blatant bribery. He wants something. 

“They got the names from the Goblet of Fire,” he says as Steve settles in to bread and cheese and roasted pheasant. “Said there was no reason to protest, since I put my name in it in the first place. Not that any of the listed warnings mentioned additional risks for the non-chosen.”

Steve chews in silence. He’s had some time to think things over, now, and Stark’s question is obvious, the same as Dugan’s, but Steve’ not sure he _wants_ to answer it. 

Stark is staring at him. Steve takes another bite. Stark rolls his eyes.

“Don’t play dull, Rogers.” 

“Oh, does everything you say require a response now?” Deflect. Defend. Curl around the answer. “I thought you were doing that thing where you think out loud and hate being interrupted.”

He gets a scowl for that, but no verbal protest. Stark’s certainly grouched about such interruptions before. 

“Tell me,” he says instead.

“Tell you what?” 

He sits upright and levels a look that Steve thinks is supposed to be stern or intimidating, but barely looks better on Stark’s face now than it did when he first started trying it out three years ago. It probably needs a certain kind of facial hair to pull off, and Stark hasn’t figured out the right shape yet. Or maybe it just needs a different _face_. Broader of jaw and heavier of brow, like both their fathers.

“Tell me why, in Salazar’s name, _I_ was the person who got spelled and imprisoned at the bottom of the lake for you to rescue.”

“I don’t think it’s important,” Steve tries. The cider prickles on his tongue, washing the truth to the back of his throat, swallowing it down.

“It was important enough to nearly get me killed,” Stark points out. He draws sparks between his fingers, a map of thoughts in light—Steve is the gold, Stark is the silver, and a twist of white fire between them.

“I mean it’s not important for the _future_,” Steve amends. “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing to happen twice.” 

“And what gives you that certainty, oh mighty Champion?” Stark drawls. Stars twinkle under his hands, bright as justice. Steve shrugs and stares at his plate and keeps eating. After a moment Stark dispels the illusion and rises in a huff to pace in front of the window. 

Steve watches him walk, watches the hungry reach of his steps, and eats until the baklava’s sitting sticky and golden and alone. 

“It was in the riddle,” he admits, tracing lines of honey with his spoon. “It said, we’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss.”

He’s braced for some kind of incredulous blow-up. Or a brush-off. _Come off it, Rogers_, or, _you always have had terrible aim_, or something else deflecting, because Stark learned that before he ever came to Hogwarts, before they ever met on that long journey over the Atlantic, before they were sorted and Slytherin House turned _Tony_ into _Stark—_ever the mask and walls, the world held at bay. He’s not ready for Stark to sag where he stands, like the string holding him steady’s been cut, or to hear him mutter, “I hate divination.”

(It’s not true, not really. In third year Stark had _loved _divination. The idea of it, anyway. It had just become rather immediately, terribly obvious that he’d never be able to get any of the spells to work.)

Something in Steve’s core freezes, static and cold. Yes, alright, the idea that he’d sorely miss Stark wasn’t one he’d wanted to look at. But it’d been obvious, in retrospect, hadn’t it? Even if they didn’t much like each other most of the time, at least Stark was a constant. And with their seventh year humming along and the prospect of apprenticeships looming at the end of it, it had been pretty obvious things would change. And it wasn’t as if the judges could steal the whole of Hogwarts, or anything, so it made sense that—that things would be changing and that would be strange and—it wasn’t supposed to mean anything else.

(It was, most definitely, not supposed to mean that anyone else had noticed him staring at Stark’s hair, or at his hands, or his lips, here in this study room that was theirs and no one else’s. It wasn’t supposed to mean that someone had been fishing through memories of summer laughter, or stolen Christmas cocoa, or dreams of—it wasn’t supposed to mean _anything like that_.)

“What—what are you talking about?” 

Stark sighs. He looks down at his hands and fiddles with something there. A ring, Steve realizes, on his right hand. He’s never seen it before. It wasn’t on Stark’s hand this morning, during the Task.

“I’m taking my NEWTs early,” he says in a rush. Steve must look as confused as he feels, because Stark continues, unprompted. “I’ve been writing my cousins. The Carbonells. They’ve got a partnership with the big Italian spellmakers in Florence.” His gaze skitters over Steve’s face, never quite meeting his eyes. He looks away. “The apprenticeship starts in January.”

Steve’s losing track of his senses. The world is too loud, too bright; he feels like his whole self is being uprooted and whipped about in a white roar of too much, too fast.

“Your apprenticeship,” he says, hardly able to hear himself. “You accepted.”

“I got the confirmation this afternoon.”

Steve sets his plate aside and leans over his knees, balancing his head on his fists.

“You’re leaving. In January.”

“December,” Stark corrects. “I have to go to London first. For the NEWTs.”

Steve looks up at him and laughs, disbelieving. “That’s hardly a month away. You think you’ll pass them?”

“Of course. After the work we did this summer? You could be applying to the Auror program right now, if the Goblet had chosen someone else.”

It hits like a hex, right in his gut. His stomach curdles. Stark isn’t going to be around for the next Task. Steve won’t see him in the crowd, or ask for his help with preparing, or _anything_, because Stark’s going to be in Italy, getting on with his life.

The mask slips. For a moment, it’s just _Tony_ standing there in front of him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—you’re right, about the money and the publicity. It’ll be good for you. Like a preview for the Auror trials. And you’ll win.” He smiles, a small twist of his mouth. “You always win.”

_Not this time_, Steve just manages not to say. “Will you be here for Christmas?” he asks. It’s a ball year, and worse as a Champion he’ll have to dance, so of course it won’t be the same as the years between but it would still be—but Tony’s shaking his head. 

“Sorry,” he repeats.

For a wild, incoherent moment, Steve thinks about kissing him. About standing up and dragging Tony close, touching his hair and actually finding out if it’s as soft as it looks. He’d hold his hand and ask him to stay, or to come back. Back for the ball, to dance with Steve, and for one more Christmas. For the second Task, and the third, to kiss him good luck, and to celebrate with butterbeer and firewhiskey and the groundskeeper’s hard cider, and maybe then Steve would feel like he could put words to whatever in him fixes on Tony so much, swinging toward him like a compass; fluttering like a sparrow when he laughs; drawing an orbit around him even when anger burns in his throat.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” he asks, trying to hold onto this moment even if he has to do it with his teeth. “You must’ve been working on this for months.”

“I honestly didn’t think it would work out,” Tony’s mouth twists again, self-deprecating. “And then you were busy with the Tournament, and … ”

“And?” Steve prompts, searching his face.

“And I didn’t think you’d care.” Tony makes a sharp gesture with his hands. “Is that what you want to hear? I didn’t think it would matter.”

“Of course it matters—”

“Of course!” Tony’s voice rises. “Of course it matters, it’s so obvious it matters that even an _enchanted drinking vessel_ knows, the _merpeople_ know, how did that happen Steve?” 

“It’s not some big secret that we’ve known each other for ages—”

“_Knowing_ is not the same as _will sorely miss_, I’m not planning on giving most of our class another thought—”

“No one knows how the Goblet works, and anyway why _wouldn’t_ I miss you?” 

The words ring in his ears (through the whole room, delivered at a shout). “Are you saying you won’t miss me?” he asks, quieter. 

Tony is pacing again, long angry strides with whip-tight turns. He doesn’t answer. 

“Tony.”

“What?” His robes flare like a cobra’s hood. Ready to strike. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to stay.” He can’t take it back. It’s out there now, in the gaping hollow space between his mouth and Tony’s ears. _Please, stay, please, you can be my lodestar and I’ll be your anchor and we’ll ride these waves forever, like always._

“For what purpose? What difference can six months make?” Tony shakes his head. “It’d only delay the inevitable. And I won’t get another chance like this.”

Steve doesn’t have an answer. Just a feeling, churning in his chest, a chorus of _not yet, not yet_, and he’s not even sure _why_. Logically, Tony is right. It’s a good opportunity. He should take it. 

He hadn’t told Tony he’d put his name in the Goblet. They’re not _friends_. Even if he’d wanted to be. Even if he’d maybe wanted—it doesn’t matter. They can’t stay at Hogwarts forever, and the future isn’t some far-off possibility anymore, it’s here and real and heavy on his shoulders, thick as fog in his lungs and crackling like ice around his ankles, and Tony is _right_. They’ve had six years. Almost seven. Six months can hardly matter. (It matters, it does, it _could—_but the words catch in his mouth and stutter behind his teeth, too soft, too sudden, too late.) 

(He doesn’t want to say goodbye.)


End file.
